AFI Top Ten of 2011 Includes 'Tree of Life,' 'Dragon Tattoo,' 'J. Edgar' and 'Bridesmaids'

AFI Top Ten of 2011 Includes ‘Tree of Life,’ ‘Dragon Tattoo,’ ‘J. Edgar’ and ‘Bridesmaids’

December 11, 2011

By Brad Brevet

The American Film Institute (AFI) announced their official selections for the 2011 AFI Awards today naming their top ten films and television shows of 2011 along with news they would be giving The Artist and the entire Harry Potter franchise special awards

Their top ten in the film department was rather diverse ranging from comedy to silent to art house and went like this:

Bridesmaids
The Descendants
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Help
Hugo
J. Edgar
Midnight in Paris
Moneyball
The Tree of Life
War Horse

If you’re looking for some form of correlation to Oscar’s Best Picture Award, last year The King’s Speech was not among the AFI’s top ten, but it was recognized with a special award, just as The Artist is this year.

The AFI has been making a list of the top ten films of the year since 2000 and their lists are made up of films that were American produced, an important fact when looking at the history of winners compared to Best Picture. Since 2000, three times the Best Picture winner not been among the top ten, the first year was in 2006 when The Departed won Best Picture and the second time was in 2008 when Slumdog Millionaire won Best Picture. Slumdog, however, was not eligible for the AFI Awards considering it was a British film.

You can also count The King’s Speech as the third time the Best Picture winner was not included, but perhaps it started a new trend of the film that receives the “special award” going on to win Best Picture.

Looking at the films mentioned above and comparing to my current Best Picture predictions, only Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is missing and it’s still my predicted winner. Does this mean it won’t be nominated or will this be another year AFI doesn’t match up with Oscar?

As for the television winners, I’ve listed those directly below.